


the beast of summer

by palisadespalisades



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Anohana AU, Child Death, F/F, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not Really A Happy Ending, Pining, Trans Female Character, ben is trans!, but that doesn't really make a huge difference in the fic, i guess?, kind of, like this is deep angst territory, richie is korean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:47:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palisadespalisades/pseuds/palisadespalisades
Summary: When Richie Tozier is thirteen years old when time stops: his best friend, Eddie Kaspbrak, dies in an accident.Four years later, he's still stuck in a standstill when a vision of his old friend appears on a sweltering summer day. He doesn't know if it's an apparition or a hallucination, but one thing is clear: until Eddie's wish is granted, he isn't going away. And for the first time in years, time starts moving again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! first chapter of the new project (referred to as deaddie au on tumblr)
> 
> it's a real departure from what i was going for in shipwreck, but i hope you guys like it anyways!
> 
> also please take the warnings seriously. eddie dies. we talk about it a lot. grief and coping is a central theme.
> 
> alright! without further ado... the fic. enjoy!

_i can’t explain the state that i’m in_ _  
_ _the state of my heart / he was my best friend_

The last day of what should’ve been Richie Tozier’s junior year was sweltering, and he was failing under the heat. Even the respite of the arcade’s air conditioning did little to fight against the first heat wave of a Maine summer. For the past two weeks, the beeping of a vintage Streetfighter console had been the only sound in his ears, the rhythmic, high-pitched noises ringing through the silence. The streets were barren, deserted until later this day, when the students would be released from the corrals that was high school and set free to roam Derry. That was the day Richie would return to his room, door locked and windows shuttered. He was taking advantage of the peace while he could.

His hands pounded the buttons in hypnotic repetition, a near-ritualistic pattern of motion he’d been repeating for the past four hours. He hadn’t moved from the console since the arcade opened, and he hadn’t planned on moving until three that afternoon, when the place would invariably flood, as it did every afternoon at three. He was dreading the stampede that afternoon, though; the excitement levels would be out of control, far more than he could handle. He’d have to slip away before that happened. Though he was loathe to admit it, his constitution was delicate, more and more with each passing year. The hyperactive, attention-seeking, class-clown Richie had long-disappeared; in its place stood a ghost of that boy, gaunt and long, with a shaking leg and bitten fingers and a mean streak a mile wide, who whispered a constant monologue to himself as he walked, alone, but did not respond or meet eyes when spoken to.

The ghost of Richie Tozier made people uncomfortable, and he was made uncomfortable by them. The solution was his reclusion; he rarely ventured out, save for these excursions to the arcade. He wasn’t looking forward to the beginning of summer; he dreaded the heat, the boredom, the memories, but what he dreaded most of all was losing these outings to the arcade. He needed another reason to stay in his room like he needed a hole in the head.

His fingers moved the joystick with a practiced ease, the kind of expertise that could only be credited to a serious attempt at Malcolm Gladwell’s ten-thousand hours. His avatar shouted from the screen, exclamations that Richie mimicked in mutters under his breath. _K.O.! Winner, Winner!_ Another coin deposited in the slot, another player selection, and he was off to the races once more. A half-hour was left before he’d be forced to leave, and he was determined to make the most of it. It only took a minute or so before his deep, unshakeable focus was applied to the game, diving into the screen with all he had. Richie had already achieved each of the top-three scores on the console, but he was determined to unseat himself — his project of spelling out “YOU - EAT - ASS” with the top-three was nearly at deadline, and still, it remained “TOZ - EAT - ASS”, which was not what he was going for; the score had been set long ago, and he’d never gotten so far since. He had been getting closer and closer, though, when a hand clapped his shoulder — not quite.

The suggestion of a hand clapped his shoulder.

It was an eerie sort of sensation; he felt the pressure against his skin, the cotton of his t-shirt pressing against his skin harder than it had the moment before, and he could almost distinguish fingers baring into his collarbone, but it wasn’t. Somehow, it wasn’t. It was a little too feather-light, the sensation of grazing fingers somehow resting on his shoulder. It wasn’t right. It didn’t feel real. It felt _almost_.

“Why the fuck aren’t you in school?”

The voice was familiar, but, again, not. It was shades deeper from the voice his mind told him to attach it to, steps away from the owner he knew it to be. It had the same nagging qualities, the same soft lilt that used to only be reserved for him, but, all the same, that voice was strange to him. That voice never got that low. It never had to the chance to.

He turned around, a _‘Mind your own fucking business, why don’t you?’_ on his lips.

Eddie Kaspbrak stood behind him, arms crossing.

Eddie Kaspbrak had been dead for four years.

Richie jolted back, bony hip knocking against the machine.

This was the beast of summer: the repercussions of his seclusion, of venturing out into the sweltering June heat and standing in a sun-soaked window when, in the past few months, all he’d known was his bedroom floor, splayed out with the blinds shut, the AC cranked and the fan blowing — a desperate try for cold when he wanted to melt into the hardwood more than anything. The iciness of his room kept him grounded; dunking himself in ice water warded off anything he couldn’t handle, kept him as close to alert as he could be, shocking his purple-rimmed, sleep-deprived eyes open. He knew he wasn’t allowed to leave the safety of his room. He knew something like this would happen when he did. This was the beast of summer: the whispers of _“Richie Tozier is off his rocker,”_ validated in about five-foot-three of hallucination, produced by a loneliness deeper than marrow and the dehydration that chapped his lips and dried his mouth. It was a start-of-summer, end-of-life mirage, waiting to draw him deeper and deeper into the desert of his own grief. It was a teasing of his desperation, in the worst way imaginable.

Richie swung his arm through the air, hoping to swipe through the apparition.

He smacked it in the arm instead.

“Wha–hey, what the fuck?” And it was what sounded like Eddie’s voice, from what looked like Eddie’s mouth — but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as it was that summer, all those years ago. He wasn’t the same.

Which was impossible.

Spectres couldn’t grow. Buried bodies couldn’t grow. Dead boys couldn’t grow.

But there he was, taller than he was the last time Richie saw him (in a casket, tiny suit fitted to his tiny body), though not by much, with longer hair (it was brushed back, short and cropped — now it curled around his ears, grazing the back of his neck), broader shoulders, a deeper voice. Like he reached the maturity he never got to.

Still, this Eddie, though worlds away from the Eddie he knew, was undoubtedly _him_. The freckles splattered across his sun-warmed skin, the sneer of his lips barely concealing a smile. He had the same doe-eyes and lines creased beneath them, childish and adult all at once. Hell, he even wore the same Christine t-shirt and gym shorts that he wore almost every day that summer.

(Wasn’t he wearing those clothes, that day?)

(Oh.)

He looked like Eddie, spoke like Eddie, he _felt_ like Eddie. But Eddie was dead.

If Richie was going to have a breakdown, he thought he would have the decency, at least, to have it in private. He’d always been good at that — good at biting his lip and cracking a joke and waiting until he was locked up in his room to bury his face in a pillow and _scream_. When his life turned to a constant spiral, circling down the drain, he hid himself away permanently; he didn’t want anyone to see him falter. Still, he figured it was only a matter of time until he lost it in public, and this was undoubtedly that.

Richie Tozier, seeing dead boys.

“I’m not doing this here,” he whispered through gritted teeth, eyes hardening at the — the ‘Eddie’ in front of him. If insanity was an inevitability, he would go through it in the comfort of his own home. He stormed past it, knocking into its ‘shoulder’ as he went. The console beeped behind him, and when he turned back, ‘Eddie’ was pressing the buttons hesitantly, as though it’d never seen a Streetfighter game before.

Out on the sidewalk, Richie winced against the sun. It was too bright a day, too beautiful to be dealing with this. He paused as he passed the door, pulling his hoodie off — he’d worn it for four days straight, in the dead heat. There was a mustard stain on the sleeve. It was all a little pathetic, and, in all likelihood, contributed to the heat-stroke he was undoubtedly suffering from. Tying it around his waist, he stalked down the street, eyes honed in on the horizon.

He would not acknowledge the spectre beside him. He would not lose his mind in public.

“Rich, Richie! Richie, wait up, I can’t fucking walk that fast, come on.” Maybe he would lose his mind in public, but with his last shred of dignity, he swore he wouldn’t show it. “Don’t be an asshole, slow down! God, you’re a fucking stringbean, you know?”

Through almost-closed lips, pressed into thing, angry lines, he hissed again: “ _Float_ .” Eyes darting back for just a moment, he hunched his shoulders, arms swinging like a cadet on parade. “Or glide. Teleport! Or. You know. Whatever the _fuck_ hallucinations do.”

“You’re not hallucinating, Rich.”

“That’s what a hallucination would say.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“I’ll be an ass if I want to be!” He walked faster, but ‘Eddie’ caught up with him anyways. He slipped an arm around Richie’s, interlinking them. It didn’t feel — right. It felt like pressure, but not like it should’ve, not like it felt all those summers ago, walking these same streets, interlinked like this, with childish optimism in their step.

Maybe that was what touch felt like. Maybe Richie had just forgotten.

“Can’t run from me now, Richie.”

“Like I ever could.”

‘Eddie’ went quiet, and Richie pushed forward again.

* * *

The arcade was packed, as it always was on the last day of school. They had broken for summer vacation only half an hour before, but the room was already full, and most of the consoles had been claimed. Richie had sprinted down the school steps and through the Derry streets as fast as he could, and still, he hadn’t made it in time. He blamed Eddie, who lagged behind, panting and wheezing a little, but mostly bitching about his asthma — _“Come on, Richie, hold the fuck up! You know I can’t keep up with you,”_ — like only Eddie did. He was running, but he hadn’t run fast enough, and Eddie was wrong, they _wouldn’t_ make it in time; they didn’t, actually. They stood in the crowded arcade, pressed together in the centre of the room.

“Fuck.” Eddie said.

“Shit. Shit and fuck.” Richie replied, scowling. “I told you we had to be faster.”

“I’m literally not capable of being faster. I would be dead on the fucking sidewalk, thanks. You know what I’m able to do, dipshit, so next time, if you’re serious, just don’t _beg me to come_.”

“You know who never has to beg to come? Your mother.” He didn’t really respond to Eddie, because he knew that he’d always strong-arm him into tagging along if he could. After all, the arcade was fun, but it was better with Eddie. Eddie was terrible at playing games himself, for the most part, but he could always beat the last round of Streetfighter when he was working with Richie. They always got the highest scores together. “You know, when we’re fucking. You know about fucking, don’t you, Eds?”

“I — of course I know about fucking, _what?_ God. You’re so fucking disgusting, you know that? I could say anything and you’d circle it back to — _eugh_ — having sex with my _mom_. You’ve got some kind of Oedipus complex or something.”

“I guess you could say... I get that Oedipussy.”

“Do you even know what that means? You’re sick. And you’ve never even spoken to a girl.”

“Uh, _Beverly?_ And _Ben_?”

“They don’t count. They’re. You know — they’re Losers.”

Truthfully, neither of them had spent much time talking to women — they were, by and far, too wrapped up in one another to do so. It wasn’t something Richie cared to think about much, but for slow, smoke-filled afternoons in his room with Beverly, towels plugging up the door so his mother wouldn’t smell the cigarettes. She was the only one able to successfully goad any feelings out of him, and even then, any expression of them were stunted at best, slipped in amongst half-funny, half-hearted jokes. It wasn’t so much a crisis of sexuality as it was a crisis of loving one’s best friend. After all, Richie knew what a crush felt like. He’d had crushes before — crushes on celebrities, and people in his classes, but this wasn’t that. It felt different. And crushes were thrilling, but this was Eddie, and maybe it should’ve been easy, but somehow — it wasn’t. It was worse. It was terrifying.

One moment he felt like he was floating. The next, he’d be free-falling.

“You’re a loser,” he mumbled, knocking Eddie’s shoulder as he delved deeper into the arcade. It was like driving around a parking lot, the way he was milling around the room. His eyes tracked each movement, waiting for someone to free up a game — any game. He was reminded, briefly, of afternoons spent driving around the mall with his father. Went would circle the lot over and over, just a moment too slow to grab a spot, before he’d finally get fed up and drop Richie off with his credit card and a list. He avoided shopping with his dad at all costs.

After about five minutes of waiting in the chaos, Streetfighter was freed up, and Richie pounced on it, shouting at Eddie over the ambient. “Eds, hey, come on, we’ve got one!”

Eddie scowled at the nickname, but followed anyways. It always seemed to go like this.

Richie put a coin in, and pressed the start button. Eddie sidled up beside him, arm slung over Richie’s shoulders. He wouldn’t ever tell Eddie, but he hated it when he did that — it restricted his movements, made him worse at playing. He hated it, but he sort of liked it too. He sort of liked the way he looked in the screen’s reflection, with Eddie hanging off of him. It felt right. So he groaned, under his breath, but he didn’t say anything.

Eddie shouted into his ear while he played, like he always did. Eddie, individually, was terrible at this game. He was absolutely awful, and got his ass kicked in minutes. He was better at the shooters. Still, he thought he had the right give – or shout – suggestions at Richie, like he knew what he was talking about, and like Richie didn’t. Richie tolerated it, if only barely. “No, you’ve got to – you’ve got to use the special combo there, Rich,”

“What _fucking_ combo, Eddie?” he hissed between bared teeth, brows knitted in concentration. “You have to be specific if you’re going to make suggestions, batshit or otherwise.” Still, he slammed a combination of buttons, and the console chirruped, announcing his victory. “God. Jesus. Okay, last round, Spaghetti-man. Ready to tag in?”

Eddie nodded vigorously, dropping his arm and moving to Richie’s side instead. They bumped hips as Eddie shoved him over, making room for himself. He took the joystick, and Richie’s hands poised over the buttons. This was it: the only time Richie let him play Streetfighter with him. This would also be, he thought to himself, the first of many attempts over that summer to win the high score. He had a good feeling about it, though.

It beeped to a start, and the game was on: focus was devoted entirely to the screen in front of him, save for occasional glances to the side at Eddie. He was chewing his lip in concentration, and God, if he wasn’t so tuned into the game it might’ve taken him out of it entirely, an exclamation of _cute-cute-cute!_ on his lips.

“Come on, come on,” Richie mumbled, free hand curled into a fist, pounding against the game. “Come _on_ , we’re so fucking close.”

“That’s what your dad said last night,” Eddie muttered in response, almost reflexively, without looking away from the screen. _God_ . Richie really was fucked, wasn’t he? “Use the. The fucking combo. I’ll set you up for it, come _on_.”

And, without thinking about it, Richie used the fucking combo — he knew which one Eddie was thinking of, because when they were playing this game together, they became two halves of one head, and the pixelated opponent collapsed in defeat. _K.O.! Winner, Winner!_ flashed across the screen, and Richie pulled Eddie into a hug, burying his nose in Eddie’s hair.

High score. They did it.

“Uh, Rich?” Eddie said, muffled into his shirt. With a jolt, Richie released him, stepping back. Close. A little too close. “Thanks.”

“High- _fucking_ -score, Eddie-Spaghetti. Spaghetti-head.” He shrugged off the indiscretion, smiling down at Eddie, who, despite himself, was grinning back, almost shining with pride. Cute. _Cute-cute-cute_.

“We sure did,” he replied, punching Richie in the shoulder. “What should we do?”

“What?”

“You know, for the initials.”

“Oh. I dunno. EDS, maybe?”

Eddie shoved Richie again, still smiling. “Fuck no. You know I hate that stupid nickname.”

“RWT?”

“It wasn’t just you. I helped, too.”

“Yeah, you _helped_. Like, barely.”

“Fuck you, Richie.”

Richie flexed, though his chickens arms had little to show. “You know how you get this ripped? By pulling all the fucking weight.”

“God! Fine!” Eddie huffed, and knocked him out of the way. Before Richie could recover, his hands were already on the joystick, typing a name in. The screen read: TOZ. “Like, you know. Tozier. Happy? You absolute sod?”

“Highly.” He glanced around. The arcade was still overfull, to the point where their loud argument did little to attract attention. He doubted another good game would free up soon, and he was losing interest, anyways. “Hey, wanna get some ice cream?”

Eddie shrugged, over it already. “Sure. We can read comics back at my place. Mom’s home, but if we stay in the garage she probably won’t bother us too much.”

“Let’s roll, Spaghetti-man.” Richie grinned at his own bad cowboy affect. Eddie rolled his eyes, but ducked under Richie’s arm when he held it out for him, and let Richie steer the two of them out of the arcade. “My treat. For one hell of a game.”

“What are you even _going for_? Is that Southern Belle?”

“God, Eddie. It’s John Wayne. Have you ever watched a western?”

"No, I haven’t, because I have at least two brain cells to rub together, unlike you. Movies like that rot your brain.”

“And rom-coms don’t?”

“Beep- _fucking_ -beep, Richie.”

* * *

There was this picture on Richie’s dresser; he’d had it since he was thirteen, and it hadn’t moved. It was a picture of him and his friends, him and all the Losers. The quarry was in the background, a greenery-filled view right before the long drop into the water. They stood, lined up and smiling, towels draped over their shoulders, hair mussed post-swim. Richie’s glasses were crooked, Bev’s hair stuck straight up, and Mike was only half in the shot, still scrambling back from his tripod. It might have been his favourite picture in the world, for a hundred different reasons. Bev was pressing a kiss to Benny’s cheek, and she was blushing bright red, giggling into her shoulder. Stan was rolling his eyes at something Richie had said, boney elbow bumping into Bill, whose hand was reaching out to Mike, trying to drag him into the picture. He could almost hear Bill’s stutters — “Huh-hey, Mike, cuh-cuh-come _on_ ,” and Mike’s reply — “By the time you finish that sentence, we’ll have taken the picture three times over,” neither sarcastic nor unkind.

But, if he had to choose a favourite part of that tableau, his answer would come easily. It was him and Eddie. He’d said something stupid, just moments before — that much he knew, though he couldn’t tell you what exactly he’d said. He was laughing, easily, raucously, a childish kind of joy written across his face. Eddie’s expression was one he’d known well, a sneer barely suppressing the same kind of shit-eating laughter that was shaking Richie beside him. They were curled into one another, a private portrait of the two of them within the larger picture. Richie’s hand was threaded into Eddie’s hair; he remembered how soft and feathery it was, how quickly it dried in the hot summer sun. Eddie had been leaning against his chest moments before, though he’d straightened up a little for the picture.

Mike had given him the picture after the funeral, beautifully framed; it was from a year before, but he’d kept the negative. Richie took it home and smashed it. His mother had it fixed. It hadn’t left his dresser since — it hadn’t moved since he’d put it down, four years previous. He’d never felt capable of touching it.

When he walked in the room, and ‘Eddie’ followed him, he slammed the frame, so the picture faced the desk. He didn’t want it seeing the picture.

Richie was fairly certain it was a hallucination; he’d felt a sunstroke-induced headache for at least an hour before. He was dehydrated. He needed sleep. He needed… something. It was the heat. It was the grief. It wasn’t real. He still didn’t want it seeing the picture.

He stood, leaning against the dresser.

It sat on his bed, cross-legged, like Eddie sometimes did.

“You aren’t real.” He meant to say it clearly, but it came out as more of a croak. It’d probably been three days, maybe longer, since he’d spoken out loud at that volume. His throat felt a little hoarse. He pulled out a cigarette, half-full pack stolen from his father’s desk, and lit up. “I know you’re not.”

“I mean, I am. I’m literally sitting on your bed.”

“He’s dead.”

“I never tried to refute that, dipshit.”

Richie paused. He figured that, if he was hallucinating anyways, his mind would at least allow him the delusion of Eddie being alive. A sort of _hey, what the hell_ type of thing. Throwing caution to the wind! _You’ve lost the plot, let’s just go balls to the wall and be as crazy as you want to be_ . He wouldn’t be so lucky, though. No, his hallucination knew he was dead. It felt, almost, like those moments in the morning when he’d wake up in a daze. He’d get dressed for school (as though he still went to school, as though he could still drag himself up every morning) and grab some toast for breakfast, and set out the door before the sun finished rising. This had happened several times, especially in the early days, that he’d walk halfway to the Kaspbrak house before he _remembered_. Something in him would dissolve, stomach dropped past his feet, six feet under. The rug would be pulled from under. That’s what this felt like, a little bit — but the rug was never there. He didn’t know the sky-high floating feeling of forgetting, the lightness of escaping his grief for even a moment. He just knew the free-falling feeling of knowing this wasn’t real.

“He’s dead. You’re not him. I need to drink some water, I need a goddamn nap, and when I get both, _you_ ,” he said, gesturing towards the figure on his bed, “you’re gonna be gone.”

It shook its head, slightly indignant. “No, I’m not. You’re stuck with me, Rich. As much as I’m stuck with you.”

It made Richie sick, how close it sounded to him. He hadn’t let himself think of that voice in years, and at the same time, it hadn’t left his mind — not in years. He wanted so badly to forget, but he was never afforded that privilege.

“You aren’t real.”

“You’ve mentioned. You think you could come up with literally anything else?”

“I’m not coming up with some elaborate debate to argue with a hallucination. You aren’t real. That’s all, end of story. I’m losing my fucking mind, but that doesn’t necessitate a fucking argument.”

“I mean, you might be losing your mind, Rich. Look at you. Look at — this.” It gestured around the room, and for a moment, Richie thought it had a point. His room had spiralled from teenage-messy to full-out depression den years ago, and it had stayed there. Ramyun cups with dried-on noodles and cigarette butts littered the room, piles of wrinkled clothing, worn, tossed aside, and re-worn but rarely washed scattered about. It was gross, and kind of pathetic — which was becoming something of a theme in his life. “But, I mean. I’m as here as you are. Go ahead and think I’m a hallucination, but whatever I am, I’m not going away.”

This, more than anything else it had said, had drawn his attention. “You’re... what?”

“I’m not going away. I’ve been here for a while, you know. Just… watching.”

“Watching what, exactly?”

“Watching you.” It paused. (His brain betrayed him, if only momentarily, when it slipped and thought — _he_ paused.) “I’ve missed you, Rich.”

And there was a note in his voice, a note that had him almost convinced that he wasn’t making this up. It was so raw, Richie didn’t think he’d be able to make it up. “I —” _I’ve missed you too, Eds._ “I can’t do this. I can’t do this right now. I cannot deal with this.”

“You’re going to have to,” he replied, hands pressing against his knees. “I told you, I’m not going away. I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

“I’m stuck here.”

“Stuck… _here_?”

“Stuck on the mortal plane.” And it was Eddie’s normal, know-it-all shithead voice, but there was a tiredness to it — a tiredness that Richie felt, bone-deep, because he knew it too. It was the weight of being somewhere one shouldn’t be. Richie, somewhere he didn’t want to think about, knew that it wasn’t right, for him to be on this Earth with Eddie —

And this spectre of Eddie, this ghost or hallucination, it was stuck here, too. It was stuck on this bitch of a planet when it should’ve moved on years ago, and even if it wasn’t real, a part of Richie’s soul pained, because it looked like Eddie and it talked like Eddie and it _felt_ like Eddie, and when Eddie hurt, Richie couldn’t help but hurt too. He wasn’t sure if he was accepting his own loss of sanity, internalizing it and rolling with the concept, or if he really believed that Eddie’s spirit had returned to him, to torture him with could’ve-beens, but somehow, it didn’t seem to matter. Either way, this was the beast of summer.

“Can I help?”

“What?”

“Can I help — you know. Can I help you move on?”

“I — yes. Yes, actually.” He looked a bit surprised, eyebrows creasing. The lines in his forehead, doe-eyes wide, it was all too familiar. It ached, and when Richie thought of him as Eddie, testing the waters — _Eddie looked a bit surprised, Eddie’s eyebrows creased_ — it was a little too easy. “I need you to help me realize a wish. My wish. It’s some Disney bullshit, I know, but it’s what I’m stuck with. And I need you to help me.”

“Me?” Richie asked, dumbly. He supposed, if this was a real apparition, that Eddie had to have appeared to him for a reason.

“Unfortunately. You know, you and the other Losers.” Eddie said it so easily, and Richie realized: he didn’t know. He had no idea what had happened, between him and their childhood friends.

He hadn’t spoken to most of them since the funeral, four years before.

“And what’s the wish?”

“Well,” he looked almost bashful, but mostly frustrated, chewing his lip. It remained, to Richie’s chagrin, _cute-cute-cute!_ “That’s the thing. I don’t remember.”

“Sorry, you want me to help you grant a wish, but you don’t know what the wish is? What, you want me to pull rabbits from hats until we find Thumper?” He blinked at the figure on his bed, scowling. “And then you, what, poof to the other side?”

“I mean, I guess — I didn’t exactly get a whole handbook on this whole _death_ thing.”

He’d said the word, and Richie jolted. _Death_. He almost wanted to tell Eddie not to say it — death, from his lips, was far too much.

“Don’t — don’t. Don’t. Just. Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Just _don’t_ , Eddie.” It was the first time he’d said that name out loud in a long time — and the first time he’d called someone in longer. Not since that day, back at the start of summer, all those years ago. He was afraid it would feel foreign on his lips, but it was like remembering an old song — it just flowed, rhythmically and naturally. Like no time had been lost at all. “God. _Eds_.” His stomach dropped past his feet, down through the floorboards.

“You know I hate it when you call me that, Rich.” But Eddie was off the bed anyways, long strides across the bedroom floor, crashing into Richie —

Crashing.

Almost.

It felt like he was hit by a wall of foam, featherlight and almost immaterial, not something he could wrap his arms around, not something he could hold onto, and never let go of.

Still, he hugged Eddie like Eddie was real.

Even for a minute, even at the cost of his own sanity and years of repression, even if it hurt more than it could ever help, he could pretend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is ... in the works. the updates here are going to be more spaced out than shipwreck was as this one is going to be significantly longer, more plot-heavy and more dense.
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments or at stephenkingatone on tumblr!


	2. Hana, Deul, Seht

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!! here's an update. this is beverly's chapter, so it mostly focuses on her. while this is a reddie fic, i think i've said before that it'll be an exploration of every loser's grief after eddie died. next chapter will focus on mike and ben.
> 
> this chapter might not seem too plot-heavy but it's super foundational to future events so just ... bear w me! this is kind of a slow burning plot until the very end where things will start to move REAL quick
> 
> again, please heed the warnings and enjoy! you can find me @ stephenkingatone on tumblr, let me know your thoughts!

_he’s got a smile that it seems to me / reminds me of childhood memories_  
_where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky_  
_now and then when i see his face / takes me away to that special place  
_ _and if i stared too long, i’d probably break down and cry_

It was the last day of school before summer vacation. Beverly hadn’t seen her best friend in four months.

She wasn’t sure if she could really call Richie her best friend, after everything that had happened, but she still thought of him that way. Love like that was hard to shake, and even though she was exhausted by him, she’d never stopped loving him.

She just missed him, was all.

Beverly rarely dropped by the Tozier house, much less unannounced — in recent years, it hadn’t been taken well, as Richie slowly withdrew into himself. At the beginning, he would still let her in. She would sit on his bed and he’d lie on the floor, Guns ‘n Roses record playing in the background. It span slowly, and Bev would watch it go. Richie’s favourite song that summer was Sweet Child O’ Mine, and he had it marked with chalk on the record; whenever it ended, he’d pick himself back up and start the song over again. She couldn’t count how many times she’d listened to that song when she was thirteen years old. She could tell you, though, that she couldn’t listen to it after that. That song — any Guns ‘n Roses song, actually — was tainted by that awful, awful summer. Those afternoons spent in Richie’s room, saying nothing, sweating in basketball shorts under the oppressive summer heat; it was painful, stewing in _his_ memory like that. School started, and Richie stopped finding her in the halls. He didn’t move when she sat next to him, but he didn’t talk to her, either. Just months before, he spent his classes jittery and excited, slipping her notes and whispering to her (and not-whispering, when he couldn’t bear it, to the ire of his teachers). After that summer, he was listless. He wouldn’t make eye contact with her, and rarely spoke.

She didn’t blame him. What happened changed all of them — and of course Richie was the most badly affected. She didn’t blame him, no; Beverly, more than anything, like all of them, blamed herself. After the summer ended, Richie stopped letting her up. Eventually, he stopped answering the door at all, and Beverly was persistent, but she could take a hint. She backed off, but four years on — she regretted letting him go.

He’d fallen, and she wasn’t there to pick him up. What’s a best friend good for, if not that?

She hadn’t seen him since he’d dropped out, at the beginning of last semester. Richie never wanted to talk, and her boyfriend didn’t want her hanging around him, anyways. He was the wrong sort. They were a little too close. The way he dealt after his little queer friend died was a little too strange. All sorts of things were wrong with Beverly and Richie’s friendship, though it’d been long-passed by then; wrong enough to keep her from checking in on him.

Sometimes, Beverly feared her own cowardice — she was too afraid to try and save Richie. She was too afraid to keep trying. She was too afraid to tell off her boyfriend. She was too afraid to say _his_ name, like speaking it aloud would soil _his_ memory. But it had been four years, and it was time for her to finally get to move on, to stop being so cowardly and start living her life, unafraid of what happened that summer all those years ago — and it was time for Richie to start, too.

She rapped at the door, hand curled into a fist.

Behind the door, she heard mumbling — muttering. She’d heard things about Richie, heard what people said, that he’d lost his mind. A quiet, defiant part of her thought: _If you understood half of what he’s been through, you’d lose your mind_ too _, goddamnit_. A louder, more frightened part of her, though, feared what was on the other side of the door. It feared the rumours (of Richie Tozier lost his goddamn mind, Richie Tozier’s a lunatic, Richie Tozier’s a _f-_ ), but she cut the thought off in its tracks. If that was bravery, she was capable of a little of it. The door swung open, and Richie stood on the other side; not the Richie she knew — a different Richie, a changed one, one worse than even months ago. Eye bags cut deeper than they did before, purple hollows carving themselves out of pallid skin. She remembered when his skin was closer to golden, when he’d get a healthy tan in hours of being outside and his mother would him for the wrinkles he’d get in 30 years. She was certain his mother would prefer those wrinkles to _this_. His magnified bug-eyes, which Bev used to consider his most charming feature, were haunted behind his bulky frames. They were exhausted but frantic all at once, and she had the impulse to ask him to – take them off, or to look away. She swallowed it.

“Hey, Richie.”

“Mmf.” He flinched, as though he’d been hit — “Hi, Beverly.”

“It’s been a while. I’ve missed you.”

“Do you — do you want to… come in?” His words were stunted, cut off as they left his lips, and he wouldn’t meet her stare — her eyes widened in surprise. It had been two years since she’d been allowed into the Tozier house.

She nodded uselessly, stepping through the doorframe when he moved to let her pass. In the two years since she’d last been, and the four since she was a second child to the Tozier household, it hadn’t changed a bit. Unconsciously, her fingers grazed the walls, a faded teal, dark naturally but illuminated by the sunlight. The same kind of flowers stood on the table that stood by the stairs, a yellow-mustard kind of tulip, a pair in a long-stemmed vase. Richie had gotten that for his mother when they were ten — he, Stan and Beverly, tumbling through the St. Vincent’s downtown, Stan picking out the vase with a critical eye, too serious for a child that young but extremely convenient in the moment, scrambling for a last-minute birthday gift. (Would Stan remember that afternoon? Would Richie? She barely did.) Richie started up the stairs, and though Beverly would’ve liked to bask in the reminiscence, she followed him, falling into step like she did most after-school afternoons when they were younger. Her hand curled around the bannister, middle finger reaching her thumb around the narrow wood. The last time she’d climbed the stairs, her fingers hadn’t met. It had been a long, long time, through the lense of a seventeen-year-old. She missed it.

The Tozier house had three bedrooms — Mr. and Mrs. Tozier’s, to the right of the stairs, Richie’s, to the left, and a spare (that Bev, for a while, could almost call her own.) Richie headed into his own room, nodding to Bev as though she could’ve forgotten, and she followed him. She was fairly sure that his parents weren’t home, but he shut the door anyways. Bev sat down on the bed. Richie put on a record.

“I have something I need to talk to you about.”

Bev nodded.

“I’ve been — seeing Eddie.”

She flinched at his name, at the easy use of it, at the context it was used in. It was almost as though he didn’t realize, in his time spent in exile, that the names of dead children — that _his_ name — they were sacred things, not to be brandished like that. Saying his name so flagrantly (and it _was_ flagrant, any use of it forbidden, disrespectful) wasn’t just saying it, it was wielding it like a weapon. Richie, of all people, should’ve been painfully aware of its capacity to wound. What he meant by _seeing him_ — she didn’t even want to consider. Maybe it was metaphorical, maybe it he was gesturing to how haunted he was, but he didn’t have to invoke him, not like _that_. If he meant it in the literal, then. She’d be better off walking out the door she’d just come from, because she loved Richie, but she’d given up her right to take care of him, and in that, her capacity to do so was lost, too.

“Seeing him?”

“He’s here, Beverly. He’s right here.”

* * *

 

“Hey, Bev. Have you ever kissed anyone?” It rolled off Richie’s tongue, unthinkingly, like most things he said did. He couldn’t help it — didn’t know how to filter himself, and, at this point, rarely tried.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, one spent in Richie’s room because it was too hot to be anywhere else. Beverly had slept over the night before, because she didn’t want to be home and Mrs. Tozier kind of understood without her having to say anything. One half of it was waiting for the other Losers to be freed up from their morning activities — Eddie, Mike and Ben were, all three, in church, or caught up in the after-church. Bev stopped attending when her father started drinking too much Saturday nights to wake up in time on Sunday mornings, and Richie’d never been in the first place, his mother Buddhist and his father Jewish, the former devout but private in her practice and unwilling to take her rambunctious son to one of the only temples in Maine, two towns over, the latter never having been practicing in the first place. Stan should’ve been free, since he went to service on Saturdays (and, sometimes, Friday evenings as well), but his time each Sunday was devoted to birdwatching with his father. Bill took advantage of the empty baseball diamonds, throwing pitches at an imaginary catcher, and he was rarely lured away. Bev and Richie had tried to go with Bill, but they’d ended up fooling around too much, Richie’s interest in baseball nonexistant and Bev’s patience for Bill limited at best.

Bev was sitting on Richie’s bed while he lay on the floor, flipping through comics. She was absorbed in one of his old, beat-up issues of Betty and Veronica, and he was half-reading some horror periodical, but more caught up in his thoughts than anything. He’d had to say it twice to even catch her attention. “Bev?”

“Huh?”

“You ever kissed someone?”

She huffed, slightly scandalized — as though Richie didn’t know the answer. Beverly wasn’t particularly interested in kissing, after all. She was thirteen, and a lot of people in their grade _were_ getting on that (and would be, especially, next year, when they’d be in the eighth grade, just shy of _high school_ ), but she didn’t care for it. And it wasn’t like she had much opportunity. She was a pretty girl, but she’d never given any boy who wasn’t a Loser (capital-L) any of her time, attention or kindness. “Only Bill.”

“Bill?”

“Fourth grade. School play. You remember.”

“Oh. That doesn’t count.” He paused, for a moment. “Bill shouldn’t count, anyways. Like, for anything, in any situation.” Their words were parsed, quick — half-finished by the other in thought, a skill developed from countless afternoons spent like this. They were less friends and more siblings, some kind of psychic mind-meld linking them. When Mrs. Tozier listened in, dusting just outside Richie’s door, she was rarely able to understand them fully. They talked without really speaking, a code built on previous conversations and in-jokes and shared looks, eye-rolls and smirks.

Beverly rolled her eyes. “Amen, sister.” She flipped the page of her comic. “Why d’ya ask? _You_ kiss anyone?”

Richie recoiled. “No. _No_. God. I mean… I’ve been. Thinking about it, I guess.”

“Kissing?”

“Yeah.”

Bev snorted — half at the comic, half at Richie. He was, she thought, stupider than Betty _and_ Veronica put together, sometimes. She was his de-facto sister, though, for better or for worse, so it was her job to usher him along, as best she could, and tolerate his stupidity for as long as it was possible to tolerate.

“Thinking about kissing... anyone in _particular_?”

She got a stink eye in return. “ _Bev_.”

“You brought it up, Rich.”

His shoulders slumped — Bev was watching him through her lashes from above, half-smirk on her face. Richie, on the other hand, looked pained — and she found it funny, but she was a little worried, too. Every time they tried to talk about his little crush, he took on this look, like he had appendicitis or something.

“I know.”

“We have to talk about it sometime.”

“I know.”

“So why the kissing talk?”

“I don’t know. I just… it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I — I. I want to. You know.”

He looked, somehow, even more uncomfortable than before, and she offered a sympathetic smile. “You know it’s alright, right? That you like him?” Her voice had a note of painful earnest that he rarely saw from her — that she rarely used at all. It was true: at least, within the relative safety of the Losers Club, it was okay. She had no doubt in her mind that her friends wouldn’t blink if Richie was gay, if his relationship with Eddie turned romantic. Stan was almost certainly gay, too, and Mike was the kindest, most accepting person any of them knew. Ben had come out as trans to Bev the month before, and had been planning on coming out to the rest of them when school went out for the summer, and Bill — Bill would never reject any of them. Despite her annoyances, he was, of course, their fearless, unfailing leader. She couldn’t imagine him ever letting any of them down.

“I know.” He paused, uncharacteristically careful. “You know it’s okay too, right?”

She bit her lip. She didn’t want to think about it, any more than he did. “Yeah. But we’re not talking about me, alright? We’re talking about you.”

He dropped his head into the comic book, groaning. “Yeah. Can we stop?”

“Do you want to kiss him, Richie?”

“I mean — yeah. But I don’t know what I’d do if I did.”

She didn’t quite know what he meant by that, but she knew better than to ask.

* * *

 

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Richie was half-growling, throat raw, like he hadn’t spoken out loud, that loud, in a long time. A nauseating, accusatory voice, crawling up Bev’s spine, said: _He probably hasn’t. Because he’s been alone._ She tried to shake it off and soften the disbelief in her gaze, but it was difficult — after all, he’d just told her that their dead childhood friend was here. And he wasn’t. Not that she could see.

“Richie, how else am I supposed to look at you? What the hell does that mean? He’s _here_?”

“He’s —” he groaned in frustration, burying his head in his hands, “right here. He’s sitting on my desk. Or he isn’t, and I’m just hallucinating, but… I don’t think that’s it.”

Richie flinched, and a chill overtook the room. She shivered.

“He just fucking hit me — douchebag, come _on_.”

Bev’s eyes darted from Richie, to the desk, and back to him. There was nothing there. She wanted to speak, but was afraid her voice would waver; she couldn’t even look at him straight-on, much less talk about this with any semblance of reason. And she knew — she _knew_ he was crazy, that this wasn’t real. He wouldn’t come back. He couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. He was dead. But, even so, something in her was desperate to believe. She missed him more than she could ever articulate, and she missed the Richie her best friend was before he died. Beverly, for the past four years, had wanted nothing more than for him to come back — to come swinging into class, backpack still bigger than he was, shouting at Richie from across the room before he could catch and collect himself. She wanted to see him smiling from his bike, rolling up to the lake with sunshine on his face and a tan that made it through several layers of sunscreen. It was that desperation, she was sure, that created this ghost that had Richie so convinced; she knew it wasn’t real, but at the same time — more than anything, her heart ached for him. If she missed Richie so deeply, when he was standing right in front of her, she couldn’t even begin to imagine how he felt.

Maybe this was his mind trying to comfort him when it hurt the most, like when brains released endorphins to cope with physical pain. She knew, after all, that his death was a wound of Richie’s that never healed — never could heal, just rotted and festered.

None of their wounds had healed. They had never gotten closure.

“Sure sounds like him,” she mumbled, voice tight and wistful.

“I don’t…” his voice cracked when he spoke, hesitant and desperate. “I don’t know how to make you believe me, but I need you to, Beverly. Please. At least — at least humour me. Let’s play pretend, like you actually believe me. Please, please.”

Beverly breathed in, deep and slow. She didn’t believe him, but she wanted to — but, at the same time, she was afraid of what believing him would do. Would it be better to indulge his delusions or alienate him entirely? On some level, she felt she owed it to him. This was a cry for help, this was him begging her to throw him a lifeline.

She couldn’t believe him, but she could pretend.

“Oh, God, Richie. Okay. Okay.”

“You believe me?” He sounded, for a second, on the verge of tears.

“Yes. Okay.”

Squeaky hinges on a heavy door croaking open alerted them to others in the house. Richie turned towards the door, and moved to slam it shut, but he was a moment too late, and a woman’s voice was calling from the foyer.

“Richie? Eo-di-sseo?”

“Up here, Umma.”

Bev squeaked in a breath. It had been years since she’d heard Mrs. Tozier’s voice, but this call and response was one she’d heard a thousand times over.

“Richie-ah, is there someone up there with you?”

“Yeah, Beverly’s here.” Richie was half-croaking, face slightly flushed.

“Oh. Oh! Both of you, come down. I have groceries.”

He, half-hesitantly, gave the empty air a pointed look, and stomped out of the room, in true teenage boy fashion. Bev glanced at the spot he’d stared at for a moment before following. He wasn’t here, he wasn’t — back as a ghost or something, she didn’t believe in any of that crap, but it was uncannily similar to watching one actor run lines on an empty stage — it was uncannily similar to when he was still here. For just a moment, she almost expected to turn back and see him perched on the desk, like he had so many times in their youth, when he was still compact enough to fit. She couldn’t imagine him getting much bigger, when she thought about it; he’d probably still have been able to sit there, had he been around.

She shook that thought from her mind, and chased Richie, both of them storming down the stairs. At the landing stood Maggie Tozier, with her neatly-pressed dress and curly black hair. Beverly hadn’t realized how uncannily Richie had resembled her; if he’d gotten any features from his father, she’d be shocked. They had the same broad nose, same tanned skin, same high cheekbones and sharp eyes. As soon as she hit the bottom step, Mrs. Tozier wrapped her into a hug.

“Oh, Beverly. You’re so grown up,” she said, head on Beverly’s shoulder. “It’s been so long. I’m glad to see you. Ah.” She patted Bev’s shoulders, looking up at her. If there was anything Richie had inherited from his father, actually, it had to be his height, because Richie was over 6ft. now, and Mrs. Tozier was at least a head shorter than Beverly. “You’re so _pretty_. You let your hair grow out! Pretty, pretty girl.”

Beverly ignored the knot in her stomach, and hugged Mrs. Tozier back, hard. Her arms wrapped around her waist, and she breathed in the smell of her shampoo — the same rose-scented shampoo she’d used for years. It smelled more like home than her actual home ever managed to.

“Go get the groceries from the car. You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?”

Beverly was supposed to go to the diner with Tom, but — she couldn’t turn down Mrs. Tozier. She’d have to call him and cancel. Part of her dreaded it, but she knew going to eat a greasy plate of fries, watching her boyfriend eat a burger across a sticky table in near-absolute silence would be worse. “Of course.” She headed out the door, and grabbed a bag. It was incredible, how easily Mrs. Tozier made her feel like a part of the family — how quickly, too.

Heading into the kitchen, she dropped the bag on the counter, and moved to unpack it — when she was around eleven, she’d started feeling a little embarrassed about how frequently she’d been eating at their place, without helping pay for groceries. When she’d tried to give Mrs. Tozier the little pocket change she had, she had laughed Beverly off, and the agreement became that she (and Richie) would help with chores when Beverly came over to eat. Putting the groceries away was something she’d done a thousand times for Mrs. Tozier, and nothing in the kitchen had changed. The top shelf was a little easier to reach, and the fridge was a little less shiny-stainless-steel, but the rice cooker sat on the same spot on the counter, and they still kept the peanut butter in the fridge, even though it made it hard to spread (a constant, passive-aggressive fight between Richie and Mr. Tozier, where he’d move it to the cupboard and Mr. Tozier would move it back.)

“Do you and Richie want to help cook? I’m making ddeokbokki and hameul pajeon. Fish night, I went to the market today.”

Beverly nodded eagerly. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she loved being in the kitchen with Richie and Mrs. Tozier — or, she had. She wasn’t sure if it would be the same now.

Richie called from the foyer, irritation in his voice. “Am I not being consulted on this?”

“Oh, never,” Mrs. Tozier called back. Something about the giddiness on her face told Bev that this was a rare opportunity — drawing Richie out of his room, spending time with him, hearing him talk.

He groaned, but walked into the kitchen anyways. “We’re making fish cakes fresh, right?”

Mrs. Tozier nodded. “I need to make another trip back to Portland. Beverly, did you know that there isn’t a single Asian grocer in all of Derry? Much less one stocking _Korean food_. I have to make everything myself. Good thing I have my little helpers now. Richie, you know what to get from the fridge, right?”

“Yeah, Umma.” He gathered the ingredients in his arms — Beverly could spot a bottle of jarred garlic, several types of seafood, and an onion. He put the onion down in front of Beverly, and gave the fish to his mother, taking the shrimp and octopus for himself. Mrs. Tozier handed him two cutting boards and took one for herself, and he handed one to Beverly. “Chop this onion up. Into small pieces.”

She nodded, taking a knife from the rack and slicing the onion in half. Immediately, she teared up — it had been a long time since she’d tried to cook, and onions were always the worst. She blinked away the tears. “Fish cakes?”

“For the deokkbokki. They’re called eomuk in Korean.”

“Eomuk.”

“Or odeng. But I call it eomuk. Old-fashioned.” She smiled warmly, and, for the first time, Beverly noticed how old she’d gotten. Mrs. Tozier had to be almost fifty, and she only looked forty at most, but there were more lines in her face than Beverly had ever seen her with, worry lines carved into her brow and crows feet around her eyes. The past few years, she realized with a start, must’ve been almost as hard on her as it’d been on her and Richie and the other Losers. She had to watch her child’s heart break. When he died, Mrs. Tozier had practically lost her son too. That couldn’t have been easy — it was like seeing a living ghost.

This wasn’t the old Richie — but, and this was a startling realization, this was the closest he’d been in years. For just a moment, she felt a little less guilty about playing along with the delusion.

It took less time for Mrs. Tozier to fillet and chop the fish up and for Richie to peel and de-vein the shrimp than it had taken for Bev to chop even half the onion. She smiled sheepishly as she handed it over to Mrs. Tozier. She loved watching Mrs. Tozier cook. When she was younger, she thought it was like watching a witch make a potion — a dash of this, a pinch of that. She never took measurements, never made anything from a box liked Bev’s mother did. She knew the recipes like the back of her hand and floated through the kitchen, grabbing everything she needed without looking.

Richie was putting the rice on, and Beverly started chopping cabbage up for the pajeon — one of the foods she remembered from years eating with the Toziers. _Seafood pancake_. She’d loved it when Richie or Mrs. Tozier taught them Korean — it was like their secret language, sometimes, watching Richie speak with his mother. He rarely spoke Korean, even to her, and Beverly knew he never really got much of a handle on it, but when she spoke to him, he was always able to respond in English without a beat. There was a kind of intimacy there that she wished she had with her parents, but they didn’t have that — she couldn’t imagine her father trying to teach her another language, even if he knew anything other than English. Instead, she lived for the little thrills, when she recognized a word or a phrase and felt a little closer to the Toziers’s world.

They were almost finished cooking when Mr. Tozier got home from work. He was a tall man, white with thick red hair, though now she could see it was going slightly gray. She really liked Mr. Tozier — for a dentist, he was a funny man, and he had a kind disposition _(“Before he opens the liquor cabinet for the night,” Richie had told her once, and she had nodded. Her father wasn’t a kind man, even before he cracked open the first beer of the night, and she was empathetic when he’d told her, but she wished her father was kind even sometimes._ ) She particularly liked Mr. Tozier because, sometimes, when she stood beside him — she looked a little like him, and for just a moment, she could pretend he was her dad, too.

When Beverly and Richie were young, they used to insist, sometimes, that they were twins. They had gotten pretty good at the story — twins, where Richie had looked just like their mother and Beverly their father. Nobody ever _really_ bought it, but it was endearing. Sometimes, they would go out, and people would think that they were stepsiblings. Beverly wished that were true, when she was young — or that they’d just adopted her, or something. She’d wanted to be part of that family so badly. When Mr. Tozier greeted her with a hug, she realized that desire had never gone away.

Her throat caught as she tried to find the words to greet him, and he ended up speaking first. “Beverly Marsh, how long has it been? Too long. Moses. It’s good to see you, kid.” He tousled her hair, and moved on to his wife, kissing her on the cheek.

Richie gagged, and Beverly scowled at him.

“What, no hug for your old man?” Reluctantly, Richie clapped his hand onto his father’s back, a half-hearted side-hug. Mr. Tozier took the opportunity to squeeze Richie for dear life, still tall enough to lift his string-bean son off the ground an inch when he did. “It’s good to see you, kiddo. I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, dad. Whatever. Hey.” Beverly scowled again — in her absence, Richie had gone from fond troublemaker to intolerably angsty teen. He didn’t know how lucky he was, to have parents like this.

“Whatever — is that what the kids are saying now, Beverly?”

She snorted, and shook her head. “Only if they’re ingrates, Mr. Tozier.”

“My little ingrate. How’s supper coming, Mags?”

“Five minutes, Went. Richie, set the table. Beverly, would you mind helping?”

“Of course.”

When they sat down for dinner, Beverly took her place at the table — _her place_ , beside Richie, where they’d always sat. For the first time in a long time, she felt like home. Kimchi burning her tongue, with Mrs. Tozier’s twinkling laugh intermingling with her husband’s booming one, she almost forgot what Richie had told her just an hour before. It took Richie standing abruptly, taking a pancake onto a side dish and sprinting out of the room with an extra pair of chopsticks, and sprint from the dining room with a _‘Be right back!_ ’ to remember.

She pushed herself away from the table and stood. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

They were relatively unfazed — shenanigans, she supposed, were par for the course when it came to parenting Richie Tozier. She supposed they were just grateful to have him back, even if it was just for part of a dinner.

When she had made it up the stairs, she cracked the door open — almost, inexplicably, afraid to intrude.

“’s it good?” A beat. “Good.” Another beat. “If you get soy sauce on the carpet, I’m going to fucking — my mom’ll kill me, so be _careful_. I should’ve brought you a fork. How do you forget how to use chopsticks? No sushi joints in hell?”

 She pushed the door open, gently. Chopsticks clattered onto the desk. Richie glanced back at her, alarmed. “Richie, what are you doing?”

“Eddie was hungry. Can’t deny a dead man hamuel pajeon.”

She nodded, skeptically, scrunching her nose. This wasn’t something he’d let her forget.

“Oh, since you’re up here — shut the door.” She did, and he sighed, relieved. “I need to talk to you. About why Eddie’s back.”

“Okay?”

“He needs a wish granted.”

“Oh.” This delusion, if nothing else, was elaborate — it was a hell of a story he’d weaved. “What’s the wish?”

“That’s the thing: he can’t remember.”

“Oh. Shit, huh.”

“Shit’s right. As in: this situation is _shit_.” Richie took a pointed tone — directed at _him_ , Bev supposed. “Anyways, Eddie-Spaghetti,” he said, pausing — his voice cracked on the old nickname, “says that we, uh. We need to get the band back together.”

“Huh?”

“You know. The Losers.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yep.”

“Does he know?” It was easier to play along than she’d thought it would be — it made her feel sick, on some level, to think about him, but at the same time, Richie spoke so casually about him that she almost felt rude, not addressing him too. She almost heard him, a voice in the back of her head, say _‘know what?_ ’ in his indignant squeak.

“Nope,” he responded, popping the ‘p’.

 “Are you… going to tell him?”

“I guess I have to.” He turned to desk, glancing up from the chair. “Later. Tonight. I need to go finish dinner with the ‘rents, and I need to send Bev on her way.”

He stooped, swinging the door and walking down, as though he hadn’t sprinted up the stairs like a madman some five minutes before. Beverly followed him helplessly. This time, she didn’t glance back. She couldn’t bear to.

* * *

 

“Hey, Rich. Teach me something in Korean?”

Richie looked up from his workbook, face screwed up into a frown. He’d been struggling through that week’s Korean lessons — despite being a genius everywhere else, he was awful at Korean School. He was in the remedial class, surrounded by toddlers, which, at thirteen years old, was the worst kind of degradation. It was just — boring. And every time he’d figured it out, he forgot it in a day. The only words he could remember were the words his mother actually spoke to him in, but even then, that was just Korean interspersed with English. It wasn’t the recipe for fluency at all — in fact, though he could understand it functionally, he couldn’t speak a lick. He wasn’t about to tell Eddie that, though. Especially when Eddie seemed to find his (limited) Korean skills _so cool_. All the Losers, to varying degrees, thought it was pretty cool — Bill was neutral at best, Mike wanted Richie to teach him too, slamming more books on Korea alone than Richie would read in a year when he found out Richie was Korean, and Stan didn’t care — he spoke Hebrew, but nobody thought that was cool. Richie thought he was just jealous.

Eddie, though, thought it was the coolest. And Eddie was the one Richie cared most about impressing. He’d said it was like a secret language. Even when asshole kids pulled their eyes at Richie and called him a gook, well, they didn’t know jack, and Richie knew a whole other language. It was little things like that that made losers like them feel cool.

“Sure. What do you want to learn, Spaghetti-head?” He hoped, secretly, that it was nothing tough, because he wouldn’t be able to answer.

“Hm. Hm! How do I count to ten?”

“Eds, that’s boring. Why don’t I teach you some swears instead?”

“No, teach me how to count to ten.”

Richie groaned, throwing his head back. They were in the crawlspace above Eddie’s garage again — Richie was sprouting like a weed, and soon enough, he wouldn’t be able to fit comfortably, but he figured he had another year before he’d have to find a new hideout for him and Eddie. Still, he took a deep breath and put on his Wizened Professor voice. “Well, first things first, dear pupil. Hana.”

“What?”

“That’s one, student. Don’t be insolent, listen carefully when I speak for I will _not_ be repeating it! And this _will_ be on the final, before you ask.”

“God, Richie, shut up. Jesus. I can barely understand you. What Voice are you _going_ for?”

“Harvard Professor.”

Eddie scoffed, suppressing a giggle. “Like you could ever go to Harvard. You’re smart, Rich, but you’re such a dumbass. They’d take one look at you and throw you out by the seat of your pants.”

“Well, pip pip, let’s get on with it. Hana.”

“Hana. One?”

“One.”

“Hana, deul, seht. One, two, three.”

“Hana, deul, seht.”

“Neht. Da-suht. Yeo-suht. Four, five, six.”

“Hana, deul, seht, neht, dahsut, yeosut.”

“You’re getting it. You just might pass this class. Ilgup, yeodeol, ah-hope. Seven, eight, nine.”

“Hana, deul, seht, neht, dahsut, yeosut, ilgup, yeodeol, ah-hope?”

“Yuhl. Ten.”

“Hana, deul, seht, neht, dahsut, yeosut, ilgup, yeodeol, ah-hope, yuhl. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

“Hey, you got it!” His fondness slipped through the character, and though he tried to recover, he couldn’t help but feel himself flush. There was something about listening to Eddie speak Korean — something _cute-cute-cute!_ but also… something special. Something he couldn’t describe. It made him feel warm inside. “I’ll teach you something else, then.”

“Hello?”

“Hey.” He paused. “Oh! You want me to — okay, sure. Hello. Ah—” He screwed his face up again, for just a moment.

“Did you forget how to say hello?”

“Moses. No. I just got… blue-balled by a sneeze.”

“Gross.”

“Shut up. Anyways… Saranghaeyo.”

“Sa… Sah-rang…”

“Sah. Rang. Hae. Yo.”

“Ah. Gotcha.” Eddie’s nose crinkled, and his brows knotted in concentration. Richie hoped his face wasn’t bright red. “Sarang… haeyo?” Richie nodded. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. “Saranghaeyo, right? Hello!”

Maybe it was a mean kind of trick, making Eddie say what he was saying. If you asked him, he wouldn’t even be able to articulate _why_ he wanted Eddie to say saranghaeyo to him. If he thought about it — thought about the warmth in his face and the butterflies in his stomach and the flood of sickness in his stomach, thinking about Eddie saying it to anyone else, even mistakenly, would’ve told him everything, but he refused to.

With a panicked kind of look he could only hope to be suppressing adequately, he grabbed Eddie’s forearm. “You can only say that to me, though. It’s… special. It’s a special kind of hello.”

“Special? So, like, one of those things where it’d be rude of me to say it to, like, old people?”

“No, it’s even specialler than that. You can only say it to me. It’s… It’s for best friends only.”

“Oh. Could I say it to Bill? Would you say it to Bev?”

“No, Spaghetti-head. It’s for _best_ friends.”

“Oh. Okay.” He paused for a moment. “Saranghaeyo, Richie.”

“Sa— saranghaeyo, Eds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that last scene was inspired by the vn butterfly soup! it's super cute, SUPER gay and free so you should definitely check it out! nice palate cleanser after all this ://
> 
> again, find me @ stephenkingatone on tumblr and let me know what you thought! thanks for reading!


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